


Heissenberg and Schrödinger aren't born yet

by humansandotherpeople



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alfred Hamilton typical homophobia, Break It Even Worse Before You Fix It, F/M, Fix-It, If what you fix is - say - a violent uprising, M/M, Multi, Multiverse, Multiverse Theory, Note that Fixing Something doesn't necessarily make it pleasant, canon typical atrocities, canon typical betrayal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 05:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14634657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humansandotherpeople/pseuds/humansandotherpeople
Summary: In which the author shows their obsession with both suicide and other forms of annihilation of the self and revolution, both in universes where they fail and in ones where they succeed.





	1. Smithereens

**Author's Note:**

> My conception of the multiverse is largely informed by Neal Stephenson's Anathem. For accessibility's sake I didn't make this a full crossover just so I could throw terms like "Hylaean flow" around. But fellow fans of both Anathem and Black Sails - Flint is totally an Incanter and Silver totally a Rhetor, amiright?

There are many worlds. This came about thus: Once, there may have been just one world, or just as many as there are today, but so indistinguishably the same that they might as well have been just one. Then, in one world an unimaginably small thing went one way, and in another it went another, and the worlds split apart and were never the same again. This happened, and happens, incessantly, so today there are as many different worlds as there are ways for all the unimaginably small things to go.

John Silver did not know this, though like many great liars he had the ability to look through the eyes of a different John Silver into a world adjacent to, but unlike his own. He did not know that sometimes, when he lied, he borrowed the words and the tongue and the brain of a man who lived in a world where everything he said was true.

He did not know this because the men who would theorise it were not born then, and the people who will prove it are yet to be born even now. Had he heard it, he would have thought it an odd superstition, but, in light of the evidence, a compelling one, like the belief that his captain could bring about turns of events just by speaking them, or that being in the innermost confidence of that captain meant a violent end, either of captain or confidant, by the other's hand.

John Silver did know the Allegory of the Cave, though. According to Plato, anything perceived in the material world was but a shadow of a thing in the world of ideas, cast by the light in that world onto the walls of a cave where people dwelled who had never seen anything but shadows. Silver considered this at great length in several worlds. In one, he was convinced his reality was the cave. He thought himself caught among mere shadows of a more substantial world, the world of ideals, the light and shapes of which he had but glimpsed. He thought some of his lies, especially one big one, were, in a way, him relaying what he had seen there: That they had a more perfect truth to them, though they did not belong into his reality.

In another world, John Silver was sure he moved among the light outside the cave. The people he lied to sat among the shadows and had never seen anything but shadows, so he told them about shadows, which were their truth, the truth they could understand, even if he knew the true shape of things to be different.

In truth, of course, the second world was no closer to Plato's ideals than the first. They were simply different, and one as real as the other.

They had first diverged when one quantum of electricity set off a particular chain reaction in Alfred Hamilton, Lord Ashborne's brain upon hearing of his son's attempted suicide in one, and a different one in the other. In the first, the chain reaction was characterised by revulsion. Both toward the act that had landed Thomas in Bethlem Royal Hospital and toward the one by which he tried to get out of it. The latter reminded him of the former: Sinful, shameful, weak. Certainly not worthy of his heir.

So when the physician who had brought him the news cautiously suggested a change in treatment for Thomas as soon as he recovered, brought up relocating him away from fellow patients who had not been agreeing with him, Lord Ashborne sneered.

“Has he not caused you enough trouble? He certainly has me. And you, what? Want to grant him privileges for it?”

The physician made no further attempts.

Thomas did. On the third, he succeeded.

Hence, he was not there for a pirate emissary to a certain Mr Oglethorpe's plantation to find several years later. On the pirate's insistence, the administrators turned over their books and correspondences for him to peruse eventually, but neither Thomas nor Alfred Hamilton's name were mentioned in any of them. The emissary saw himself forced to return to his Pirate King empty-handed, defeated.

Said King, Long John Silver, was not as angered as the emissary had feared. Instead, as soon as he was alone, he succumbed to a deep sadness, indeed almost despair. His belief that there was always a way out still held, but he knew in that moment that there was no way out of Flint's war that would not leave Flint either his mortal enemy, or dead.

Neither option pleased Silver, to say the least. And when he believed that Madi, his lover, his tether, was dead, he resigned himself to picking neither, choosing instead what had somehow become the easiest option: Leading a war against the world. A hopelessly doomed war devised by a single-minded, vengeance-fueled madman. But at least the madman would be by his side, and not dead. At least there would be relief, if not comfort, in the rush of Flint's darkness.

News of her survival made him reconsider very quickly. He had not, it would seem, actually joined Flint in the land of those with nothing left to lose. Indeed, he knew now what loss was, and her loss in particular. He couldn't bear the thought of suffering it again. Even if it was her wish, he desperately wanted to keep Madi from putting her life at stake every day, from living it amid the fires and the shots and the bodies and the blood they would cover the New World in. He didn't want her to watch the people she cared for, her subjects, die one by one while it became increasingly clearer that their deaths would be futile.

When Flint swore that this once, he would trust Silver to see a plan through instead of the other way round, suddenly Silver wanted to protect him, too, from all these things. But how could he protect him from something he had become synonymous with? He could not. Not while the fact that had made him synonymous with it remained true: that Miranda and Thomas Hamilton were both quite dead.

“Oh, you bastard,” Silver muttered to himself when he saw Flint and Dooley carrying the chest on the shore. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply. “Maybe it's better this way. I didn't deserve your trust and you didn't deserve mine.”

  


Later, he shot Flint. He didn't much like the thought of having the pistol wrestled from him in the last moment and being beaten to death with it, so for surprise he did it in the middle of another sentence that wouldn't convince Flint. Something about the crewmen who had already sacrificed themselves in pursuit of an unachievable vision, and the ones that still would. Now Flint would definitely not be convinced by it.

He had seen Flint covered in blood so often it was hard to believe this time it was all his own. He couldn't believe he had done this at all, got rid of Flint this way. It seemed more plausible that he had coaxed and dragged and hauled him to Savannah, where his lover waited, for whom he would transform himself into James McGraw, someone with too much to lose to want to start a war. Plausible but for no lover waiting in Savannah, and the undeniable fact of James Flint's dead body in front of him on the blood-speckled forest floor.

In a crude imitation, a mere shadow, of that more plausible and truer world, he had done the only thing that he could to reunite Flint with Thomas Hamilton. And Miranda Hamilton, too, for good measure.

Silver cried while he buried his captain, and not just because of the strain the extended act of balance and weight distribution that was digging a hole put on him.

He told the comforting lie of having brought Flint to Savannah as much to himself as to Madi. It wasn't enough to placate either of them. Of course Madi was right, he had been planning this betrayal for a long time, preparing for it, even though his preparations didn't come to fruition. And of course it was as much a betrayal of her ideals as of Flint's. Perhaps more, because perhaps there was more to hers than there had been to his.

Flint had really believed that he was fighting for a better world, Silver was sure of it. He had convinced himself, and Madi, and always just enough men to send into the next battle, and at times even Silver, of it. It must have helped him sleep at night, much in the way telling himself that Thomas Hamilton was kissing James Flint goodnight in Savannah in that very moment helped Silver sleep. Flint could never fully admit that his true desire was merely to raze the world to the ground in revenge.

Now, revenge was among Madi's motivations too, but it was not just revenge for two dead people. It was for generations who had laboured, toiled, suffered, been displaced, robbed of their freedom, and killed, and still did, and still were, and still would if nothing changed. Watching Madi scramble to hide and protect as many of her maroons as she possibly could, failing far too often, he caught himself regretting taking away her chance to change something, however slim.

Silver, who had been so convinced that he never wanted to fight again, found himself longing not only to see her fighting, but to fight by her side.

 _Are you not glad that she is alive,_ he reprimanded himself, _that she is as safe as possible?_

He was glad, he decided. But there was no harm in dreaming of another world, where that battle was possible. In such a world, not only Madi could be there beside him, but also James Flint and Thomas Hamilton, returned triumphantly from Savannah. Not only could they all fight together, but they could win, and survive, and rebuild. It would be no matter whether Flint's far-flung promises were just dreamed up to justify his revenge; by his strange powers he would make them come true anyway, just by speaking them.

Silver buried this fancy as he had his captain and went to help the maroon's cooks peel potatoes.

In time, he ceased to be Long John Silver, and even Princess Madi's previous paramour, and became, simply, the one-legged white man. There was truth, at long last, in that.

  



	2. Asunder

Of course, John Silver had strange powers of his own, so his fancy, in just as real a world, was the truth.

In that world, some miniscule thing in Alfred Hamilton's brain found a different path when confronted with the news of his son's attempt to take his life. That this would prevent his son Thomas' death would not avert Alfred Hamilton's fate, to be murdered to avenge Thomas. In this world, it would simply happen more unjustly. Instead of disgust, the thing in his brain caused him fury.  
“Are you not tasked with remedying my son's affronts before god? Instead you've added this to them,” the Earl of Ashborne demanded, red-faced and growling, of the cowed physician.  
Trembling, the physician managed to counter: “In light of this… failure of our curative efforts that you point out, I was actually going to suggest something, both for your son's immediate well-being and the long-term recuperative process. If I may?”

“Well?” Lord Ashborne asked.

“Both the established treatment and his current surroundings seem to have borne ill effect on your son. There has been trouble with his fellow patients as well. I think it might be wise to begin a new line of treatment away from Bethlem, away from what troubles him here, and, if I may speak frankly, my Lord, from the rumour mills of London that… that he is liable to stoke even now. Inadvertently.”

The doctor looked ill with how much he regretted speaking this way. But even though Lord Ashborne's face clearly showed his disdain, he did not dismiss the idea.  
Instead he asked: “What place would you suggest for this treatment?”

And the physician named the place where years later, an emissary from a pirate king would find Thomas Hamilton, alive.

That pirate king, Long John Silver, received the news of Thomas Hamilton's survival reverently, like a great treasure from beyond the dark cave they were trapped in. Finally he held something in his hands with which he could actually influence his headstrong, single-minded and stubborn captain and, for the time being, ally. An out from whispering half-truths and suggestions and hoping for the best. An out, also, from what he might have had to do without this information if something less than the best had occurred on one of those occasions.

Flint was, after all, befitting his name, the spark to the world's powder keg. If Silver did not want to be blown to more bits than he was already in, he would have to snuff it out. At least if he did not find a fireplace to contain it in, away from the powder. In the right hearth, the shining spark would grow into a beautiful, warm fire that would not devour the world. And perhaps, having tamed the flames in that way, Silver would finally be rid of the perverse urge to be engulfed by them.

He knew now that the hearth was in Savannah, the only question that remained was how to get the spark there without igniting the powder in the process.

“Thomas Hamilton is alive and in Savannah,” he whispered to himself in the darkness. He tried to picture Flint upon hearing these words and could not imagine anything but the dismissal Flint had shown for the idea when he had brought it up hypothetically.

“But it's true. You could be with him rather than wage war on the world in his name,” Silver insisted to the Flint of his fancy. It was no good. It could not happen like this. Not if he didn't want Flint to simply integrate freeing his lover into his vision of remaking the world. Silver would have to bide his time. Catch him in a situation, a state of mind, where he would favour joining Thomas over freeing him. Silver sighed. Nothing was ever easy with Flint. And increasingly, betraying him seemed the hardest of it all.

There was a temptation not to do it. Be swept up in Flint's promises. Devote himself to them, to Flint, no matter how much pain and loss and horror and death lay down that path. After learning of Madi's supposed death, more pain and loss and horror and death seemed fitting. The words were now always at the tip of his tongue, awaiting an opportune moment to burst out: “Thomas Hamilton is alive and in Savannah. We can get him, we can win him for our cause.” _We can, if nothing else, achieve some happiness for you on our path to certain doom._

But the moments were never quite opportune enough and Silver's instinct for self-preservation never quite weakened enough. And then, when Woodes Rogers offered to release Madi in exchange for the treasure, he was glad he had held back. He had something to protect. He would need the leverage.

“You know where Madi is and what it will take to get her back. Well, I know where Thomas Hamilton is and how to get you to him,” Silver was about to whisper, when Flint simply agreed to follow his lead on freeing Madi, with no threats spoken and no bait dangled, only an appeal made to repay Silver's trust in his judgement in kind for once.

It struck Silver speechless. Tempted, suddenly, to reveal Thomas' whereabouts without condition, as he would if he was truly deserving of that trust, and yet still tongue-tied by his damned opportunism. A lifetime of making every morsel of information he held work maximally to his favour was not forgotten in an instant, however moving that instant was.

It turned out to have been too good to be true anyway.

“Oh, you're such a bastard, and I'm a fucking idiot,” Silver murmured to himself as he watched Flint and Dooley carry away the treasure that could buy back Madi. “Would you still be doing this if you knew?”

 

Soon enough after, Flint knew. With his ship sunk, most of his crew slaughtered, the personal killing of six of his own men freshly on what was left of his conscience, and a gun aimed steadily at him, Silver deemed him in a position from which he was unlikely enough to shape the circumstances of his reunion with Thomas Hamilton. Flint still fought back, but Silver took his survival of that resistance as evidence that he had judged the moment correctly. He was sure Flint could somehow have wrestled back control against all odds, had his heart been in it.

It wasn't. And as they neared their destination, it became even less so. Before long, Flint and Silver were holding civil conversations again, their quarrels and newly stoked mistrust momentarily set aside for the sake of passing time in an agreeable manner. Of course there was still some bite to it, but had there ever not been?

“You know,” said Flint, shackled hands resting on the railing, face turned into the salty wind, “if all this is not a ruse to lure me to a place where you can shoot me in peace–”

“It's not,” interjected Silver. “You know as well as I do that Skeleton Island would have been as good a place as any.”

“If it is all true, and not even a partial ruse, an empty promise as bait to see me imprisoned humanely, rather than dead, for the sake of some sentiment on your part–”

“A rather strong sentiment that would have to be, for me to risk you, with nothing to keep you there, fleeing and visiting your revenge on me.”

“At which point it might as well be strong enough to raise a man from the dead for me,” Flint mused dryly.

“Exactly! Not that I did, mind.” He spread his hands defensively. “He was conveniently already alive. So what else is the case, if that is true?”

Flint inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. “Then it is also the case that I have not seen him for nigh a decade, and I have no idea how he has changed. God knows I am not the same. Moreover, time may have distorted my memory of him, so I cannot even recollect who he was when I did know him with certainty. In short, I can't predict his reaction to this, to me. Will he be appalled by the things I've done in his name? Will he be glad that I have put them, if somewhat reluctantly,” he rattled his chains in emphasis, “behind me? Will he be disappointed that I missed my chance to effect some change in the world?”

Silver hid his discomfort behind a smile. “I imagine you'll find out soon.”

“Know who I have met in the last ten years? Her highness, Princess Madeleine Scott.”

“Yes, me too.”

“I dare say that I know her well enough to foresee her reaction to our failure to see our plans through. And that she knows me well enough to recognise the lie if you tried to fault me for it.”

“I won't try to lie to her.”

“How uncharacteristic.”

The levity in his tone surprised and pleased Silver. It was reminiscent of times when their relationship had not been as strained. He returned it in kind: “As you say, she knows you too well anyway, she would see right through me. Which would damage my standing with her even more. So what would be the point?”

After that, Flint just looked at him intently a while.

“Oh, what's the point?”, he sighed, in the end, shaking his head slightly.

Silver knew he wasn't simply echoing him.

“In what?”

“Trying to sway you, still. You've clearly made your decisions and your sacrifices.”

Silver shrugged. “No point, I imagine, except that it's in your nature.”

“Well. I shall try to stop, despite my nature.” And much to Silver's surprise, he really did, and not just to lull him into complacency. The inexorable pressure on his mind to go back on his plan mid-execution eased, and became nothing but a shimmer of regret at almost certainly losing Madi's favour forever, at ending his strange, occasional friendship with Flint by making sure he never saw him again.

But the latter emboldened him to do something he never would have, had he expected to have to face its consequences. With Flint, whom he would not encounter again, the only witness, and no relationship with Flint in the future that might be damaged or changed, there would be no consequences but his own memories, which he had never had much trouble controlling.

So after landing in Savannah, a quarter hour's walk from their destination for a man with the use of both his legs and twice that for him, when Flint offered his arm to right himself on after his crutch had slipped awkwardly, perhaps even to lean on while walking, if his pride allowed it, he took it. Then he reached and took his other arm, turned him towards himself, and leaned forward.

“What is this?” asked Flint, cautious. Silver wasn't even sure that was the right name to use anymore.

“Nothing of import. I simply want to try before returning you to the love of your life,” he said very softly.

And then, taking great care of his balance, he kissed James.

He need not have worried about his balance. James did not drop him. In fact, he held him up as well as he could with his shackled hands. His heavy, halting breaths tickled in Silver's beard. His lips were dry and hot and reluctant to let go.

And yet it ended.

Silver got his crutch back into its most comfortable position under his arm, found his grip on it and stood on his own again. He congratulated himself on his judgement: It had felt good, but probably not good enough to end the world for. Possibly good enough to raise the dead for.

“Well, that was edifying, wasn't it,” he remarked to James, who was staring at him with wonder.

“Not for me it wasn't,” James replied. “You're still a fucking mystery to me.” He shook his head, disbelieving. “Are you really going to do it? Put me in humane captivity? Penance made sweet so I don't run from it?”  
“I'm not actually that keen to see you penitent. Reminds me that I might have to be, one day. And I don't think you'd live to see the sweetness, without the captivity. But essentially, yes. I'm going to do it.”

And shortly thereafter, he did.


	3. Kingdom Come

Some months later, there was a shift in the mood in the maroon camp. Instead of places where they could run and perhaps be safer, people now whispered about places where fighting had broken out. Places where they might help a friend, or a mother, or a grandfather, or a lover, or a child, or a sister overthrow their master, if they joined them. Soon it seemed as if every boat from Nassau brought news of another upheaval, as if every other boat brought new arrivals seeking strength in numbers to shield them from retributions for those upheavals.

One day on which such a boat had landed, the princess of the maroons burst into the hut of John, the one-legged white man, unannounced. She had not visited him since before Woodes Rogers had held her captive.

“What is he doing?” she demanded now, thrusting what John recognised in the light of her lantern as badly stained and crumpled newspaper pages at him.

“What is who doing?” asked John, struggling to half sit up. He had been trying to sleep.

“Flint,” said Madi, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, and maybe it was. The rumours and news of late had had John thinking about him, too.

Still, he gave no indication of that when he replied: “At this hour, after a hard day's work? Sleeping, probably. Maybe in his lover's arms.”

“A hard day's work doing _what_ with the governor of Carolina?” This time John took the sheets of paper held out to him. He fumbled for a candle. Madi lit it on her lantern for him. In its light, he began reading while she drew up a chair to his bedside and sat down.

The bulletin came from the rebuilt Charles Town. It detailed the exploits of a man who claimed to be the son and heir of the late Lord Proprietor of the Carolina Colonies and the Bahama Islands, Alfred Hamilton, fourth Earl of Ashborne. He had challenged the legitimacy of the governor of Carolina, accusing him of having come into power by the hands of a cabal founded to keep the previous governor, Peter Ashe, in place. To this end, they had conspired to have Alfred Hamilton, Lord Ashborne killed and his son imprisoned. Apparently, some of Carolina's nobles recognised and sided with the pretender, among them the late governor Ashe's daughter.

John shook his head, grinning involuntarily.

“He's good,” he said, his tone disbelieving.

“Why?” asked Madi. “Of all the people to impersonate, why this Lord Hamilton's son?”

“That's not an impersonator,” John said and handed her the paper back. “Who he is is one of the true parts. You've always got to have some truth in there for it to work.”  
Then it dawned on Madi. “The man Flint was sleeping with. He was the son of the Lord Proprietor of the Carolinas?”

John shrugged. “These things happen. You wouldn't believe it, but at one point, I was fucking an actual princess.”

Madi smiled faintly. “I find it easier to believe than that you did not shoot your captain. Yet here we are.”

“I did not shoot him, and here we are.” In relative safety, while elsewhere war was brewing. The same war, in a different shape, which Silver had tried to stop. And all he had managed to do was extricate himself from the middle of it, an ineffectual and selfish thing. “He did what he always does and I should have seen it coming. He'll be convinced that there is only one way to achieve something, that if it fails, all is lost. Then it fails. Then he comes back from the most untenable positions more ambitious than ever.”

“You agree it is him, then. Or should I say them?”

“Yes.”

“Then what is this they're doing?” Madi tapped on the newspaper in her lap. “Some sort of two-pronged attack, from above and from below?”

“It certainly looks that way.” John lifted his shoulders again. “I know his tactics no better than you when he does not have command of a ship and crew. Other than that he'll soon get himself a new ship, if he wants one.”

 

And it truly wasn't long until Flint evidently found himself another ship. Or perhaps the newly instated Lord Proprietor of the Carolina Colonies and the Bahama Islands found him one. In either case, Flint's name was whispered in fear again, and spoken with more respect than disdain in the circles which John frequented.

There were retaliatory raids again. Slavers were sunk, their cargo freed. The pirates before Philadelphia received support, and through it, a narrow victory, at the last minute, when finally faced with the law. Coastal towns who refused to pay their taxes as well as communities of maroons and freedmen who defended their very existence were protected from the British forces sent to reestablish order. Apparently once a small fleet of the British navy had fled from just the one hunter. All these things were told in connection with Flint's reawakening name.

John of all people knew that this did not mean that Flint was necessarily involved in all of them, but it certainly meant that he was _back_. A name did not build – or, in this case, rebuild – itself on its own. He moved between exasperation and elation when he heard those tales. But most of all they evoked fear in him.

And just as he had feared, the day came when Madi asked him whether he would join her and a rather large group of selected volunteers, even Julius among their number, in moving north to aid the rebelling slaves against those that would stem the tides of revolt.  
He asked her what good he would be in those fights.  
“What use would you be?” said Madi. “You would give them a narrative. You would inspire them.”

And just as he had feared, John Silver agreed to accompany them. If it was not to be avoided, then the only thing one could do was to be on the right side of it, or at least the least wrong side. And if there were people you cared for on that side as well, joining it became all the more inevitable.  
Flint was hard to pin down, being both fast-moving and half-mythical, so the volunteers did not attempt to seek him out to confer about tactics going forward. But Lord Thomas Hamilton was easy to find.

Being in Charles Town felt strange to Silver. He could not help but liken everything about this city that had been crippled alongside him to himself. The houses and the armaments still being rebuilt were his stump, still healing. The temporary shelters of wood and cloth were his crutch. And of course his head, like the governor's – the Lord Proprietor's – mansion, had lately been occupied by Thomas Hamilton.  
Madi had only brought him along to the place in a pragmatic calculation that his sex and complexion would make him the most likely among their number to gain an audience with an English gentleman, an English nobleman, however disreputable he might otherwise be. The precaution was proven unnecessary, as they were both of them equally, after the most cursory inquiry after their identities and intent, let in and told the master of the house would return soon and surely join them thereafter. In actuality, the servant – if he was indeed a servant – did not use the term “master of the house”. He called him Thomas.  
That was not the only unexpected behaviour Silver noticed from the occupants of this seat of power while they waited for Lord Ashborne, or for Thomas. For one, there were more of them than seemed usual. Not all of them were dressed for the place, either as gentlefolk or as servants: Some looked like labourers, some wore ill-fitting and dissonant concoctions with some style, like Madi and Silver themselves. A great number of them conversed with each other about this and that, and not one of them didn't seem to be going about their own business in some way.

It reminded Silver of the governor's mansion in sacked Nassau, taken over by pirates, without the raucousness. He watched these strange courtiers and wondered how many had asked for an audience, been invited in unceremoniously, and never left.

Lord Ashborne looked exactly like one of them, entering unannounced and unremarked upon, briefly joining a conversation here and there, but drifting towards some goal of his own. Only when it became clear that Madi and he were that goal Silver realised whom he must be looking at.

“Your highness Madeleine Scott, and John Silver,” he said, “I was told you have been waiting for me.”

It became clear that he held some considerable power here when he drew a chair to them and, without so much as an additional gesture of command, the chatting and ambling groups of courtiers broke up and they filed out of the room. The last one closed the door behind herself silently. Suddenly, the drawing-room, which had previously been a bustling social hub, had become a quiet, private space for the lord and his guests, while outside the door the household continued in its lively goings-on.

“You must excuse me,” the lord said. “I forget time when I visit my wife's grave. You see, it is not hers alone, it is a mass grave. Hours pass while I contemplate their deaths, and hers. Their lives, and hers.”

“No need to apologise. We need to be grateful you granted us an audience at all, my lord,” said Silver, with caution.

“Please, call me Thomas,” replied Thomas, eyes downcast. He lifted his gaze to take in Madi. “And how could I have rejected hearing you out when I have heard so many good things about you?” Then he turned to Silver. “You I have heard both good and bad about. To be honest, my informant does not seem decided yet on whether to hate you or love you or perhaps both. That may render you less desirable as an ally than the princess, but also intriguing. So please, both of you, do not hesitate in bringing forward what you have come to see me about.”

Silver, whose mind would not, despite his best efforts, move on from the mention of Thomas' informant and his opinion of him, was glad that Madi took this as her cue.

“We have reason to believe that you, along with one Captain Flint, have played a role in recent slave uprisings.”

“I have been trying to prevent them.” Anger rose in Madi's expression at that, but she let him speak. “Of course, I see slavery as morally abhorrent. I have been making the argument for freeing the enslaved and offering them waged labour to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, as well as enshrining the abolition of the practice into law. Where this has fallen on deaf ears and there have been revolts, both the captain you mentioned and I have been doing our best to avert retaliation, each by our own means. I cannot allow without intervention that those are punished who ended an unjust state. The captain's reasons are similar, though not the same. So these are the roles we play.” There was a glint in his eye, something mischievous in his smile when he looked pointedly at Silver. Silver was glad it wasn't the judgement he had been prepared for, and yet he felt found out. “We only directly participated in one instance where circumstances of forced labour ended abruptly.”

“I apologise that my companion did not free you when he could,” said Madi. “But I am glad that you made it out despite that.”

“I suppose the thought that any walls and guards would hold back James Flint was always absurd,” added Silver, evading eye contact with the lord.

Silver still felt Thomas' look resting on him like a heavy weight as he replied: “Except the walls and guards of his mind, the strength of which I think you calculated well. He was perfectly prepared, almost happy, to let the world outside take its course and simply atone, or so he believed at the time. I convinced him, however, that it was not right that Mr Oglethorpe should profit from his atonement, or that of any of us, no matter how deserved. In any case, the plans were already in place, half the guards already on our side, when James joined us. He just so happened to have formed himself into a shape that fit very well into them.”

While Silver was still recollecting himself after learning that his scheme might have worked on Flint, were it not for the soft-spoken, quietly confident man in front of him, Madi went back to business: “And now? Have you no plans beyond sheltering those who follow your example from the consequences? I don't believe it.”

Thomas seemed benevolently amused. “It might be unwise to lay bare our plans before I know your position towards them, you know.”

“She wants to know what shape we need to be to fit into them,” said Silver.

“And whether you are the right shape to fit into mine,” added Madi.

They turned out, all four of them, to have been shaped by life into forms that even where they clashed with each other still fell seamlessly into the developments of the coming years, which went beyond even the most harebrained of plans. A two-pronged attack against the established order became a four-pronged one. Madi led the charge from below, Thomas from above, Flint from outside and Silver right in the midst of the society they were seeking to overturn.

And there were victories, grand victories even, hard-won but undeniably won nevertheless: the Virginia revolts, the peace of Philadelphia, the sacking of Boston, the treaties with the Creek and the Chickasaw. Over the months and then the years they accumulated into something solid, a state where all their efforts could not be undone by a simple turning of the tide, one act of betrayal here, a stroke of misfortune there. Which was lucky, as the tide turned many times, they were betrayed often, and misfortune struck almost constantly.

This meant that for all that there were triumphs, they were never enough to bring an end to the bloodshed and atrocities into reach. Silver felt by turns vindicated or angry or disappointed that his unheeded warnings about this war were proving themselves right in this way. He bit his tongue and refrained from reminding any of the other three that he had told them so when they despaired, as each of them did at one time or the other. As luck would have it, in a partnership of four, which they had unwittingly become, there was no shortage of shoulders to cry on, or, for that matter, hands to take away bottles or blades.  
So it was no longer out of the ordinary for John to hold James after a costly battle, listen to him recount the dead, reminisce or bitterly remark upon someone's flaws that cost them their lives, lament that he cared or that he cared too little.  
On one such occasion, in the fifth year of the war, James surprised John by holding on even tighter, then whispering into an extended silence: “I am so sorry. But I still believe we needed to at least try.”

John returned the press of the embrace, stroked his hair slowly. He needed just a second to figure out how to show James the illuminated world outside the shadows of his own mind.

“James,” he said, “we've done more than just tried. We've _won_.”

James snorted a startled laugh. “King George may beg to differ.”

“Don't you see?” John continued. “King George doesn't matter anymore, nor anyone on the other side of the ocean thinking they have authority here, not to the people in the cities and on the land. It is known there, now, that nobody should toil for another's profit, especially not when that other is a world away. It is known that where this is not upheld, masses of people will rise up. This can't be reversed, it can't be made un-known. Ask Madi, ask Thomas, they are beloved regents despite the war because they have given people this.”

Stunned silence from James.

“And you. You have fought for it, defended it tooth and claw. You may be a monster, but you are their monster. You are a hero. There is not a town in America where they could string you up for the mobs that would topple the gallows.”

And as ever, there was a world in which every word Silver said was the truth.


End file.
